1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to conferencing and, more specifically, to video conferencing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Video conferencing may be used to allow two or more participants at remote locations to communicate using both video and audio. Each participant location may include a video conferencing endpoint for video/audio communication with other participants. Each video conferencing endpoint may include a camera and microphone to collect video and audio from a first or local participant to send to another (remote) participant. Each video conferencing endpoint may also include a display and speaker to reproduce video and audio received from a remote participant. Each video conferencing endpoint may also be coupled to a computer system to allow additional functionality into the video conference. For example, additional functionality may include data conferencing (including displaying and/or modifying a document for two or more participants during the conference).
Video conferencing involves transmitting video streams between video conferencing endpoints. The video streams transmitted between the video conferencing endpoints may include video frames. The video frames may include pixel macroblocks that may be used to construct video images for display in the video conferences. Video frame types may include intra-frames, forward predicted frames, and bi-directional predicted frames. These frame types may involve different types of encoding and decoding to construct video images for display. Currently, in a multi-way video conference call, a multipoint control unit (MCU) is required to composite video images received from different video conferencing endpoints onto video frames of a video stream that may be encoded and transmitted to the various video conferencing endpoints for display.